It’s been an extremely long time since I wrote about the cats, so let me bring you up to date. We arrived in Abruzzo from the UK in October 2007 with our two Birmans, Little Plum and Aurora; and Edwin, our Siamese. Sad to tell you we no longer have Little Plum. She...

You’ll have gathered by now that we had company on the 1400-mile trek from our old home in Somerset, south-west England, to our new home in Ascigno, a hamlet about 4 miles from the old hill-top town of Casoli in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where we’ll be...